Native filmmaker to debut film at Sundance Film Festival

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- A young native filmmaker just got the news that her debut film will be screened at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival.

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"Mud: Hashtli'shnii" is a story about an alcoholic mother on the Navajo Nation who tries to keep her addiction a secret from everyone.

"It follows a lady named Ruby and she is attempting to kind of connect with her son on the last day of her life. She doesn't know it, but it's the last day of her life," said Diné filmmaker Shaandiin Tome.

Tome, an Albuquerque resident, graduated from the University of New Mexico with a film degree. "Mud: Hashtli'shnii" is the first short film she wrote, directed and edited. This story is one that she drew from personal experience.

"One of the things that created the idea for this story was a couple of my family member had passed away because of exposure death. Exposure death in Gallup is one of the highest rates," she said.

KOB reported on the exposure death epidemic that was happening in Gallup during the winter of 2016. Officials said more than a dozen people passed out after a night of drinking in below freezing temperatures, all of them Native American.

"It's bringing a perspective that isn't normally seen," Tome said.

She would like more Native American stories to be told by Native American voices in film.

"Mud: Hashtli'shnii" will screen four times at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah later this month.

"I'm 24. I don't know; I'm scared that I'm peaking too early or something," she said. "But I hope to just continue taking that energy and that momentum and keep going forward and keep creating."